How to Geocode Addresses from Australia

Have an interest in geocoding or reverse geocoding of batch files for Australia?  First you need to understand the postal addressing structure they use in Australia. You may think postal codes are the same in Australia as in the USA, Canada, or the UK.  Of course, with similar histories and language there are similarities, but to be certain you are focusing on the right attributes of their postal codes, we offer this brief article specific to the postal code address structure ad defined for Australia.  It is important for anyone interested in geocoding to understand the exact address structure of the places they are examining to prevent confusing the algorithms of the bulk processing software used for large batch files.  Let’s take a closer look at the structures used in Australia. 

Australia is the largest country in a region referred to as Oceania. As noted, Australia’s common language is English and technically this democratic republic recognizes a sovereign by tradition, that of Elizabeth II, Queen of Australia (bearing witness to its history as a colony and subsequent commonwealth of the United Kingdom).  It is the world sixth-largest country by total area, yet much of it is uninhabitable, or . And nevertheless, Australia is the 13^th largest economy by GDP. And all that very harsh with an exceptionally low population density.  Vast areas exist in the center of Australia that are virtually uninhabitable for humans under normal circumstances.  This leaves more densely populated urban areas on the perimeter, similar to the population pattern in Canada, it’s North American cousin in United Kingdom’s history.  With these unique geographic challenges, Australia requires fast and reliable postal service to keep its population connected, and accurate geocoding is one of the technical methods used. Postal services in Australia rely on a structured postal address we will examine in detail.

Let’s look closer now at how a standard structured postal address is structured in Australia. If you grew up in North America, Australian address system will look familiar, but not identical. In fact, you may not initially recognize an address as in Australia if you remove the country name.  We will go over the details to make sure batch geocoding of Australian addresses are done properly and the results are given with rooftop accuracy when using batch Geocoding tools, like CSV2GEO.

Each critical data piece of an address is referred to as a “token”.  Address tokens are listed below and include such familiarities as Street Number, Street Name, City, Postal Code, etc. They can be easy align with csv2geo manual address token selection, but caution must be taken not to corrupt the address structure with unnecessary, extraneous data pieces that can mistakenly be confused.  Additional data associated with any single line of data are acceptable if we recognize them as inert relative to the formal structured postal address.

Let’s look at a real example: The address of an Australian Museum where the full address is listed as:

     1 William St,

     Darlinghurst, NSW

     2010, Australia

When processing an address from Australia  using CSV2GEO, it is important to stage properly the address tokens in separate columns or designate multiple tokens as part of the same column. From that, you will find that a single line of data for this example, ready to upload into CSV2GEO would look like this as a line in a “.csv” file.

                    1 William St, Darlinghurst, NSW, 2010, Australia

The individual “tokens” separated by commas are defined as shown in this chart below:

Australian address tokens	CSV2GEO address tokens	Example
Number - The most common are house number or building number . Ig gets more complicated when unit and block numbers are together like : 12/344 where 12 is a unit apartment number in a block 344	Street Number	1
Street – may consists of several parts which may introduce errors if not understood and controlled. You may expect the actual name of the place or resident in that home . . . + Street Type: Alley  Ally  Arcade  Arc  Avenue  Ave  Boulevard Bvd  Bypass Bypa  Circuit Cct  Close Cl  Corner Crn  Court Ct  Crescent Cres  Cul-de-sac Cds Drive Dr Esplanade Esp  Green Grn Grove Gr Highway Hwy Junction; Jnc Lane; Lane Link; Link Mews; Mews Parade; Pde Place; Pl Ridge; Rdge Road; Rd Square; Sq Street; St Terrace; Tce	Street Name	William St
City - this may be a formal city, village, township, rural route, etc. and is not limited to only formal and legally incorporated “cities”	City	Darlinghurst
State – 7 + ACT listed below Queensland QLD New South Wales NSW Australian Capital Territory ACT Victoria VIC Tasmania TAS Northern Territory NT South Australia SA Western Australia WA	State	NSW
Postal Code – formatted as a single strand of (4) digits:   XXXX Note: Some area in Australia do not have postal codes.  In this case, leave that cell in the .csv data file empty.	Zip	2010
Country – in this example, Australia	Country	Australia

For geocoding using CSV2GEO it is irrelevant what combination of columns are used as long the tokens (column headers) are marked clearly with proper headers or selected manually.

If we place the whole address in one line and separate the address lines by comma, we get . . .

 

. . . and the preview of the map shows exact location

 

The system loads the data and looks like the following illustration:

Without using any selection, if only addresses are present, click Process data to see first ten results in preview

Information:https://meteor.aihw.gov.au/content/index.phtml/itemId/270020

Ref:  Similar article for How to Geocode Addresses from Brazil

---

Posted 3 months ago